Aptos – After being unresolved for almost 50 years, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office identified Karen Percifield’s killer, 25, thanks to the use of genetic genealogy and family DNA evidence.
“No matter the time that has passed, we will never stop seeking the truth,” said Santa Cruz County Sheriff Chris Clark, in a statement. “Progress of DNA technology continues to provide new opportunities to do justice and close the victims and their families. This case is a powerful example of how this progress can give us the answers we are looking for. ”
According to an article in the Archives of Sentinel, on May 28, 1976, Percifield, of Ohio, was found dead in an Aptos ravine, stabbed twice in the chest. The article indicates that Percifield was in the region by visiting his sister and was last seen to have a drink at the Bayview hotel now closed in Aptos. After witnessing himself to argue with his mother, Percifield left the hotel and disappeared for several days. His body was later found in a ravine near the Nistene Marks State Park forest.
The death was studied as a homicide and the detectives collected forensic evidence at that time. According to the 1976 Sentinel article, Richard Anthony Sommerhalder, then aged 29, was already detained for the murder of two women – Vicki Bezore and Mary Gorman – and was named person of interest in the murder of Percifield. However, the original investigators did not have enough evidence to stop it, and the case became cold.
Sommerhalder was then found guilty of the murders of Bezore and Gorman and served about eight years in prison before being released and moved outside the state.
According to a press release from the Santi Cruz County Sheriff Bureau in 2019, criminalists from the Sheriff Bureau found multiple evidence to develop a DNA profile of the Percifield murderer, whom they sent to California Department of Justice Bureau of Forensic Services for other tests. However, the suspect was not in the agency’s DNA database.
Investigators then tried to locate Sommerhalder to obtain a sample of his DNA, but quickly discovered that he died in 1994. According to the Sheriff office, “through genetic genealogy and family DNA tests, and with the help of the Ministry of Justice and Othram laboratories, while he was not held for the murder of Karen. To give the family of Karen Percifield this little closure. »»
The District Prosecutor of Santa Cruz County, Jeff Rosell, said in a statement: “Despite the time and death of the aggressor, the closure that the resolution of this murder brings to the Percifield family is incredibly important. The sheriff’s office must be congratulated for their diligence and its commitment to resolve this crime. ”
Percifield’s sister and daughter also congratulated the investigators for their diligent pursuit of the killer.
“For detectives and the forensic team, I appreciate that they do not give up,” Percifield’s daughter said in a statement. “It weighed on me all my life, not having a memory of my mother and asking me who it could have been, it just means. I am so grateful that you have not abandoned.”
Percifield’s sister added: “It is good to know that it is not finally an open case, even if it has been closed in my mind. It simply proves that DNA is a good vehicle to solve these things and put things at rest. I was so young at the time and was not equipped to understand everything and I am so grateful that it is ultimately finished.”
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
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